Evacuee Mike Robertson, Sr. Policy Advisor with the Esketemc FN

…Mike Robertson is among the approximately 1,500 “South siders,” as they call themselves, who live in an area about 40 kilometres south of Burns Lake, where wildfires are burning hundreds of square kilometres of tinder-dry forest. Some structures have been burned but Robertson did not know all the details. The wildfires are also threatening other communities in north-central B.C.: Fraser Lake and Fort St. James. …In the area south of Burns Lake, accessible only by ferry across Francois Lake or remote forest service roads, some residents have stayed behind, including logging contractors, to create fire guards, often done by scraping or plowing the ground of any fuel, to create kilometres of fire breaks. …This year’s fire season is now the third worst on record since 1950. More than 1,800 fires have already burned nearly 5,800 square kilometres, 70 per cent of that in northern B.C.